


Lost in Dreams

by legendaryroar



Series: Shatt Week 2018 [6]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dissociation, M/M, held captive, real shiro was imprisoned the whole time his clones were out there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 03:47:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15548931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/legendaryroar/pseuds/legendaryroar
Summary: After a time, they never take him out of his cell. He’s kept only in darkness, and kept alive against all reason.Time has no meaning, no substance. He’s thought about scratching lines on the wall, but he has no idea where one day ends and another begins. He has no idea if anything he remembers happening to him is even real.Sometimes he doubts he himself is real.





	Lost in Dreams

Life has long since become an endless cycle of darkness, broken only by a brief and blinding flicker of light as the slot in the door of Shiro’s cell is opened to allow a pitiful excuse for food to be pushed in. In the beginning there had been more breaks. Bright rooms, poking and prodding. Alien contraptions placed on his head for hours and hours.

After a time, they never take him out of his cell. He’s kept only in darkness, and kept alive against all reason.

Time has no meaning, no substance. He’s thought about scratching lines on the wall, but he has no idea where one day ends and another begins. He has no idea if anything he remembers happening to him is even real.

Sometimes he doubts he himself is real.

He has a vivid image in his mind of himself, lying on a table, opening his eyes and sitting up. A vivid sensation of a hand reaching out to touch him, the other him touching him, before harsh command caused that other him to collapse back onto the table.

Some days, in his endless darkness and boredom, he thinks it was him, and that he had some kind of out of body experience. Maybe that’s what they’d been doing to him, experimenting, forcing him out of his own mind.

Or maybe he’s just gone mad.

Snatches come to him sometimes. Memories? Dreams? Whispers. Talk of a replacement. A clone. Kuron.

A crazy dream. Or maybe the darkness is the dream. Maybe he died long ago and hasn’t realised it yet. Maybe if he figures it out, the door will open, and he’ll be allowed to pass over to something surely better than this. Something familiar and soothing. Earth maybe.

But then sometimes Earth is what feels like the dream. Like a feverish hallucination of a life that never happened.

Maybe he’s always been in darkness.

 

* * *

 

Time carries on without meaning, the darkness lifts only for those moments during which he’s given food. He gave up talking to his captors a long time ago. They never respond.

He supposes they don’t need to. If there’s some copy of him out there. An improved model. Possessing both natural arms perhaps. Possessing a sane mind for certain. A replacement that’s better than the original in every way.

Or maybe his guards aren’t real. Maybe there are no walls. Maybe it’s just endless darkness and his mind created the walls to keep him from wasting energy wandering endlessly in the dark.

He’s long since lost the ability to know dreams from reality.

 

* * *

 

One day, or maybe night, the light builds and his stomach grumbles on. It’s been a while since he’s been fed, he thinks. He can’t really know for sure. Maybe he only dreamed he hadn’t been fed for a while. Maybe the hunger isn’t real. Just something his mind creates to distract him from the nothingness.

Kind of it, he thinks, but surely there are nicer distractions it could conjure up instead.

But the light isn’t only coming from the open slot in the door. It builds and builds. In spots that get larger and larger in the vague outline of a rectangle.

There’s a sound, he realises. Like something heavy striking the door. It seems to be buckling at the edges. The light is streaming in.

He watches from the imaginary wall he’s propped up against, wondering what his mind is going to conjure for him now. Or perhaps what _they_ are going to conjure for him now.

Is he even awake?

Is he even alive?

In between those thoughts, the heavy thud of something hitting the door increases in volume. Seems to double.

Moments after he’s pondering his existence again, the door gives and light floods the room. Bright and blinding. His eyes burn but he doesn’t look away. He lets them burn. It makes him feel more alive. It makes the dream seem real in the way only pain can anymore.

There are figures framed in the doorway, and it takes time for his eyes to focus.

He knows those faces. Somewhere deep in his memories, or maybe his dreams, they’re there.

Keith. Matt.

The step into the room, and they seem so real. Wearing clothes he’s never seen before. Clothes he’s not sure he could imagine from nothing. Clothes that have probably been planted in his mind by _them_.

They lay their hands on him, gently, warmly. He hasn’t felt another’s touch for so long he can’t know that it’s real. Matt’s crying. If Shiro reaches out, he can touch his tears. Warm and wet. They feel so real that Shiro almost wants to cry as well. Or maybe he already is but that detail isn’t important for the dream. Maybe he’ll wake in the dark in mere moments, with a wet face, all alone.

Perhaps this is the best dream of all, he thinks, as they help him to his feet and lead him out into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> Re-posted from an old account to this, my new one. Written for Shatt Week 2018, Day 6: Replacement/Galra. I’m using replacement by looking at the consequences for Shiro of being bodily replaced by Kuron the whole time.
> 
> You can find me at [@legendaryroar](http://legendaryroar.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


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